Inside the art, music and mind of MORTIIS

(by Mike Riddick)
(photography by Robyn Von Swank)

Like changing seasons, MORTIIS has dazzled the interests of metal, gothic and industrial enthusiasts alike with his varied approaches and gradual shifts in image and style over the past 15 plus years. Once the axe-man of early EMPEROR and now the solitary creature of many moods and sounds, we took some time with MORTIIS to delve into his past and explore the inspirations and passions of his work. Here is the result…straight from the inventor’s imagination…

What inspired the creation of MORTIIS in the early 90s after your withdrawal from EMPEROR?

I had been getting into a lot of old, “obscure” eletronic music, stuff like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and so on, and that stuff really appealed to me. The older, 70’s electronic records, especially by Klaus Schulze, were really kind of dark (that’s how we chose to interpret them at the time at least) and drony and they all had these long 20-25 minute songs that was really a new thing for me as well. Interestingly, it was Euronymous who turned me on to that stuff. So before I even left Emperor, I was listening more to that than any metal at the time. I had also been introduced to some undergound industrial/experimental stuff that blew me away by being incredibly dark (in my eyes) yet not metal: I was discovering stuff like Coil, Sleep Chamber, Brighter Death Now, In Slaughter Natives and was waking up to a whole new world. I think by late 1992, current black metal had already started to bore me a little, I mean I was into a lot of what was coming out at the time because it was still pretty fresh, but I guess my attention span wasn’t that long. So at the time I was drifting away from traditional black metal, going back to my roots which were old Kiss and Wasp and stuff like that from a traditional hard rock standpoint, and stuff like Venom, Celtic Frost, the German and Canadian thrash metal bands, etc., as well. I was also getting into Tolkien and similar literature at an alarming rate at the time, so obviously all these different elements/cultures sort of blended together as I was working out new ideas for what I was going to do next musically, and it all happened pretty fast, I mean I think I pretty much started Mortiis the next day after I got fired from Emperor. I walked down to the local music store and just bought a keyboard with the idea that I was going to record all my music in ancient Transylvanian castles. To this day I love that idea, but of course, it never happened quite like that.

Being the lyricist for EMPEROR, it was apparent you had a strong imagination. Did this help bring forth the origin of your journey into ambient music?

Yeah, I guess it did. I had worked out the sketches for the parallel world concept during the summer of ‘92 and had, I think, brought that idea up for the other guys in Emperor, that we were going to do some concept stuff. By the time the mini had been recorded I was out of the band, so I took my lyrics with me, about a dozen at the time, that had not been used yet, except “Cosmic Keys” and “I am the black Wizards” (no, not a typo, but I’m sure everyone questions our English abilities) which had gotten used already. Those lyrics were the foundation for several albums’ worth of concept.

Do you largely feel you pursued ambient music because you didn’t have other musical outlets through which to express your fantastic concepts? For example, an album of all bass notes perhaps would not sound so magnificent in comparison to what a synthesizer could do, yes?

I didn’t even know what “ambient” was at the time, I just really liked the atmospheres some of those records I listened to conveyed to me, and I knew I wasn’t too keen on getting involved in bands again so it seemed a pretty natural and fitting direction for me to go in. My musical horizon was really expanding as well, in terms of what I liked to listen to. Euronymous, at the time, introduced me to a lot of music I still love to listen to this very day… anything from old Black Sabbath to Ultravox. I remember he played me “Killing yourself to Live” by Black Sabbath and “The Voice” by Ultravox. I remember that as if it was yesterday. In that sense, I probably owe him quite a lot. My musical tastes really did shape up in a big way between 1991 and 1993 when we were hanging around the old store, etc. Anyway, I digress. Ambient music, even though I never called it by that name, seemed the way to go to me. That term, ambient, was tagged on to me when I joined up with Cold Meat Industry, and Roger tagged it Dark Ambient, or Black Ambient, I can’t really remember.

Your roots were in the underground black metal movement, yet you were adventurous in your creation of an ambient music project. To my knowledge, the only other band that had done something like this was ABRUPTUM and perhaps EQUIMANTHORN in America was taking shape. Do you feel it was a big risk to make an ambient project and promote it in the black metal underground?

I’ve never really paid too much heed to what might be risky or not. If it feels right to me, I’ll do it and I always worked that way. I guess no one else from where I came from had really done something like this so I knew it was different but I never thought of it as a risky move. Abruptum I remember was considered metal even though in reality it was probably more of a weird sound FX kind of thing. Equimanthorn came a bit later didn’t it? Had more of a chanting ritualistic feel to it from what I remember.

It seems the success you realized from “Fodt til a Herske” was really great, particularly because EMPEROR was also taking off in popularity, even though you were no longer in the band, people knew of your participation with them. Do you feel this helped with your success some?

I’m sure it did. But, to be honest, that was probably more noticeable on the demo I did before that. I doubt all those people would have ordered it or been as interested if it hadn’t been for my past. I think once I started working with CMI for the second (and beyond) record, Mortiis was pretty much established with an “exclusive fanbase” so to speak.

How did you come into contact with Roger of Cold Meat Industry? It seemed like a perfect fit for you, as CMI was only publishing Scandinavian artists at the time.

Yeah, I had discovered Roger’s project, Brighter Death Now a couple of years earlier, and was getting into some of the current CMI bands at the time, In Slaughter Natives, Raison D’etre and so on, and I just figured “well fuck it, I’m going to send him an advance tape of the album”, so I did. I sent him a copy of the first album, that hadn’t come out yet. About a week later he wrote back, told me he really liked the music I had sent and wanted to sign Mortiis. Nothing complicated or anything, real simple contract, it was a pretty good time. I ended up doing three records with him, although the last one, “Crypt of the Wizard,” was sort of a split release between CMI and my own label, Dark Dungeon Music, at the time.

I like to think MORTIIS bridged the gap between black metal and gothic-industrial-ambient music. It seems your signing with CMI introduced a lot of metalheads to new forms of music they would have otherwise been ignorant of. Do you feel you can take credit for this? Do you believe it was simple luck, a genius approach or the fortune of good timing that brought forth the success of your second album, “Anden Som Gjorde Oppor”?

Again, I never really thought about that, at least not at the time. I was just stoked to be signed to what appeared to be a real label run by a guy who had his shit together, and was releasing really cool records at the time. The situation with Malicious Records, for the first record, was nothing if not messy. I never deliberately tried to weld together these two scenes, but that sort of happened after I started releasing records on CMI. Metalheads were beginning to develop an interest in the industrial/experimental underground, which in terms of sales, definitely benefited some of the labels. I never got the impression this new “joint venture” was as popular from the industrial types’ standpoint, however, I always sensed a sort of mild annoyance or discontent from the die hard industrial types. I guess maybe they felt their turf was being invaded by people they may not have had a whole lot of respect for. Now, obviously this doesn’t go for everyone, I met a lot of great people during my stint with CMI as well.

How did you feel about all of the black metal side-projects that happened as a result of the popularity of MORTIIS? Was it sickening after a while or did you feel you had started a new movement altogether?

I’m not sure if all that happened because of me, I think I was part in making it a slightly less underground phenomenon (for good and bad) and people wanted to get on the wagon, but it wasn’t all me. I mean, some people might have figured it was easier to play with a couple of keyboards as opposed to actually getting down and sweaty with it! I seem to recall some pretty shitty sounding records were being made after a while, and the artfulness of it probably forgotten in the “rush” of being part of the trend, if that makes any sense. Regardless, I never was very good at looking around me, at what was going on, I just kept paving my own way and did what ever I felt like doing, and because of it, I was probably slowly making my way out of that scene again almost as soon as I entered it. I never really truly belonged anywhere anyway.

What was it about your early creations that you think attracted so many metalheads and non-metalheads to embrace your work?

Well, metalheads probably embraced it partly because of my association with Emperor, and partly because Mortiis early on had a sound that was strangely complimentary of metal music, for some odd reason. Obviously, the visual aspects of Mortiis had very close ties to metal visuals as well, at the time, so that stuff all helped. Obviously, not everyone got into it; I’ve been called many a name through the years, haha. Non-metal heads, I don’t know to be honest… There was a certain mystique to Mortiis back in the early days, and that might have been attractive to certain alternative lifestyle people.

Over time your image and musical approach has evolved and changed. Do you regret any periods in your artistic evolution or are you pleased with everything you have set out to accomplish?

I don’t directly regret anything, I think whatever I did at whatever point in time is an honest snapshot of who I was at the time. There are records I’ve done that I wish I would have done differently, and performed in a better way technically, and produced with better insight sonically and so on, I won’t try to sugarcoat that, some of the older shit could have been much much better. But at the end of the day, there was always a reason. Early on, it was simple lack of experience, a bit later on, it was due to lack of time to work properly on music, believe it or not, I was swamped with dealing with label bullshit, after starting my own label, so music suffered for a while. I used to do everything on my own, no one around to tell me something sucked or this could be better, etc., until the shit was out on the streets and I realized too late. All pretty foolish of course, I should have realized sooner that something wasn’t up to standard, but that was me, rash and thoughtless. But regret? Nah, not in a major way anyway, it’s part of who I was, an honest portrait of a rash, impatient kid, haha.

As a result of years of change, do you feel your fan base has changed as well? In making changes, did you receive a lot of disappointment from fans? If so, how did you handle that?

The first time I learned how personal some people get about your music, how disillusioned they are, was when “The Stargate” came out. That record has a different feel to it, bigger and grander than before and not quite so obviously focusing on the dark aspects of things, even though it totally is a dark type of record, it’s just not the bleak, monotonous record that the previous ones tended to be. I had some people write in telling me I was a piece of shit and didn’t deserve to live or some shit like that. At the time it weirded me out a little because I thought it was fucked up how people had the audacity to think that I had betrayed them somehow. This was never about them, and it never will be, but some people just never fucking learn. I mean do they write all bands they listen to and diss them if they don’t do the kind of record or maintain the sound they project upon them? But, in time I learned to simply ignore that kind of shit. It’ll happen all the time, with every record, and since then it has. Some people will always fall off with each record, they’re looking for flaws, and some people want your record to be flawed so they can diss it… Fuck them, at the end of the day, I do this because I love music, and that’s what I want to do. Let’s put it this way: I like music a lot more than I like people, who should I care the most for?

It seems when you put your mind to a project or vision, you put your entire effort into it. Do you operate like this in all aspects of your life or just with music and art?

I tend to overdo things I guess, I make small plans or develop small ideas for… it could be anything, and it just sort goes beyond the initial idea. But more so than anywhere else, I do it in music and art. I always tell myself, this song is going to have only a few tracks, be very simple, and of course it ends up being a 100-track nightmare in the end. For one of the new songs for the upcoming record, we had one song where we ran a whole separate computer only for the drums. I think we had 64 tracks just with drums. It was ridiculous, but that’s how things turn out with me. Visually, I have gotten better at giving artists more freedom to come up with ideas, but I still do a lot of brainstorming and a lot of “hinting” and so forth. The new videos we did were developed by me and the director, Robyn Swank, and I like to think my input definitely helped bring those vids, visually, to the insane level we got them to eventually.

It’s obvious you esteem the value of image and environment in association with music. Why do you feel it is so important to incorporate the power of art and imagery with music? Do you feel the modern digital format strips music of its image? Do you have plans to find solutions to working around this predicament…perhaps through videography and the use of YouTube?

Are you referring to mp3’s? Proper, legal downloads always (or should) come with artwork and other bonus addendums like avatars, banners, and so on, so in a fucked up environment where physical records are a dying breed, that’s an acceptable solution. Kind of like being shot in the knee or your foot… probably better to be shot in the foot. I think the more layers of elements you can add to your music, that helps bring out whatever emotion, reaction, response that you are looking for is all good. I mean movies add music to emphasize the feel of the scene, and in music we do it vice versa. If there were other elements we could add to the package, I’d do that too… I haven’t done surround yet, would love to do that one day, and of course once I get the opportunity to do that, bands like NIN and Depeche Mode or even Rammstein, probably started using fucking Holograms.

Was there a particular event in your past that inspired you to want to marry art and music so intensely? For example, maybe it was an album you saw in your youth that made you want to compose something that is altogether a work of art both visually and musically. If there are examples, please give them to us.

I’ve just always been a fan of great cover art. It didn’t matter what bands it was…I loved Jethro Tull’s “Broadsword and the Beast” enough to tattoo it on my back, I loved the old Sisters of Mercy old 12″ sleeves, those uniform almost identical looking EPs they put out, kind of like what KMFDM did years later. I was a big fan of the photography on the old Tangerine Dream records, some of the Enigma records look fantastic, Skinny Puppy, The Cult, and it just goes on like that. Those records just made me decide I wanted great looking records. Sadly, not all my records look great, some of them look like travesties, but that was beyond my control and were put out when I didn’t have the control I wanted over certain releases.

Thanks for your time. We hope to talk again soon about your next projects. In the meantime, do you have anything you wish to share with our readers?

New record coming out soon, so keep an eye out for that, and in general thanks for sticking around, and hope to see you on tour.

www.mortiis.com
www.myspace.com/mortiis1
www.youtube.com/officialmortiis